Book Review: "How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying" by Django Wexler

By robertmcgrath on July 7, 2024

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler

Wexler is a prolific writer, though I haven't read much of his works. I gather that much of his oeuvre is popular fantasy, and he puts this experience to good use here to give a meta and somewhat comic twist.

This is also yet another novel that is strongly influenced by video games. The whole fictional universe resembles a video game, including the characters, the basic plot, and the style. In this case, Wexler does a good job with the novel form, so it's fine. (I hate novels that are basically play-by-play of a video game, and this isn't that.)

The entire plot revolves around a familiar video game convention, the apparently infinite reboots of Davi's life in this world. As in many video games, when Davi dies, she returns to the same point (but remembers previous lives), and then 'plays' her life again. (Hence the titular 'and die trying'.)

This repeated rebirth means that, as in a video game, she has learned by trial and error, and has pretty well memorized the world and all the possible "moves" (at least near the "spawn point" in space and time.). Davi doesn't remember very much of her life before she got stuck in this loop, though, and frankly, has no clue what exactly is going on.

Living in this "infinite reboot", Davi has learned a lot, and tried nearly everything. After living and dying thousands of times, she has become quite a character (no pun intended). She's more than a little jaded and basically tired of it all. Death has little fear for her, nor does she worry about what people might think or say about her. Cynical and hedonistic, she's a thousand-year-old twenty-something. Lot's of snarky banter and 'tude is on the menu

But she is sick of this time loop stuff. It's getting old. This time around, she decides to try to play the other side. I.e., she decides that, instead of trying to save humanity from the Dark Lord, she will recruit a "horde" and become the next Dark Lord herself.

Well, it's definitely something different.

The horde-building / Dark Lording turns out to be quite a challenge, not least because Davi soon gets beyond the familiar stuff she knows so well from her well-worn rut. It turns out that this world still holds a lot of surprises, and soon enough she's playing with as little foreknowledge as everyone else.

We notice, long before Davi herself does, that it's a lot trickier to not give a f* when you actually care about the people you are dealing with. Her "horde" believes in her, many of them seem to like her, and some truly love her. The feelings become mutual, and, oops!, that becomes a heavy load for a Dark Load to carry.

With great darkness comes great responsibility?

We also notice—again, before Davi does—that it's far from clear what will happen when and if she succeeds in 'winning' the Dark Lordship. The Dark Lord seems to be a role in a video game. What does that entail? What can the Dark Lord do, exactly? And, by the way, why is there a new Dark Lord every few years?

For that matter, who created the 'game'? And why?

But it's way too late to worry about these questions now.

The quest is afoot.

Dark Lordship or bust!